We went for a walk on the pier tonight and I took some HDR shots again. The sky was really cool but by the time I shot these it wasn't quite as exciting. This is a local coal burning powerplant. I shot this plant for the HDR challenge and the cooling tower for a Nighttime challenge and Take Two.

This is 4 combined in Photomatix and the usual treatment. Lots of curves/levels tweaks and I actually had to create two B&W copies to avoid even more blowout near the center lights. I masked out the blown out part to reveal the better layer on the building below. I dodged/burned the sky and water. Lots of NI on noisy sky. Finally I applied a light dose of a Silvertone action (just a simple curves layer). Resize, sharpen, save for web.

I see some banding in the sky but I didn't notice where in my workflow it came and I'm not going to redo it when I have to get up in 6 1/2 hours!

Awesome. A beautiful photograph. I think I see the banding you mention but it is pretty subtle. Thanks for the technical explanation, I'll have to study it more closely sometime when I have time and am not so tired!